Cyber Monday Breaks Record, But It's Not Really A Thing Anymore

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Cyber Monday Breaks Record, But It's Not Really A Thing Anymore

Cyber Monday isn't really a thing anymore.

Sure, online retailers still love to flog the Cyber Monday moniker drummed up by marketers a decade ago to give Internet shopping some parallel cachet to match brick-and-mortar Black Friday. And online shoppers spent more than ever yesterday—more than $3 billion, according to the Adobe Digital Index, a 16 percent jump from last year.

But this isn't surprising—and it shouldn't be. We love to shop. We buy a lot of stuff during the holidays. And seeing this is 2015, we buy a lot of it online. So much so that the Monday after Thanksgiving doesn't really stand out as dramatically different from the long weekend that preceded it.

Adobe found that from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday shoppers spent upwards of $11 billion online, which means a whole lot of online shopping is happening before Monday rolls around. In fact, on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, Adobe estimates online consumers spent $4.47 billion combined, a record in its own right. The core of the holiday shopping season now starts on Thanksgiving Day and extends throughout the weekend until Cyber Monday, says eMarketer retail analyst Yory Wurmser.

All of which goes to show that Cyber Monday isn't the only day when online shopping matters. Americans are still flocking to stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but even more are opting to stay home and take advantage of online discounts already available, sometimes even days before. As these online deals proliferate, the idea that they need to be limited to one day feels more and more arbitrary. Cyber Monday may just be a few years old. But really, it's already over.